


Biotope

by 11dishwashers



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Cannibalism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 13:32:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10537518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11dishwashers/pseuds/11dishwashers
Summary: Kyungsoo goes to Minseok's for dinner, and eats with Xiumin.





	

Kyungsoo has never heard of a man named Xiumin before. Everything pointed to Kim Minseok, film student who’s bright and cheery like he’s wearing dungarees with poppies in the pockets. Every piece of information goes out to him- his nasally voice in the corridors, comics in the cubbyholes, love letters on the desk.    
Above all else, when the date’s proposed, Kyungsoo doesn’t expect Minseok introducing himself as Xiumin. And doesn’t expect the baggage that comes with such a date, the google maps search bar with an address typed in, the counting of bus fare.

Kim Minseok lives in the stems of every flower in a rose garden, but Xiumin lives tucked away. Ivy creeps up walls in such places, sparse graffiti follows your footsteps. When Kyungsoo steps off the train after such a long ride, he thinks that they should’ve just gone to a coffeeshop on campus, but his long time crush drives him out to the outskirts of the very  _ city _ . He’d tried so hard to look like he wasn’t trying this morning, standing in front of the full length mirror that’s, inconveniently, a permanent fixture of Baekhyun’s room. And he’d gone through the teasing- the clumsy fingers applying eyeliner, the  _ ‘Live a little, Soo! It looks nice!’ _ s from Baekhyun’s punchable face. 

And here he stands, at the very door of Minseok’s house, waiting for Xiumin to greet him. He’d thought it odd that he’d been invited out on the first date, but supposedly, Minseok just loves to host dinner parties and the sentiment isn’t so strange.

“ _ Oh yeah, _ ” Baekhyun had said, looking up from a soap magazine that he has a subscription for. “ _ There’s always some sort of party over there. I’ve had dinner with him myself, that time where Jongdae opened the wine and the cap gave him a black eye. _ ”

The house isn’t shared with anyone, just Minseok(and Xiumin) and salmon coloured paint. The curtains are drawn apart and you can see inside the rooms from the yard- what appears to be a bedroom, brown leather sofas in the sitting room, a study with stacks of photo albums. There’s a welcome mat that’s well worn from the amount of guests Minseok gets. When the door opens, the smell of tinged beef follows him out to the porch. He’s wearing a very white and very baggy shirt, smiling with sparkles in his eyes. 

“Kyungsoo!” he says, even going so far as pulling him in for a hug.

“Ah, hello,” is Kyungsoo’s reply, muffled through the starchy fabric on Minseok’s shoulder. He breaks away first, though Minseok’s hand rests on his waist, and he feels like he’s going to get sick everywhere- but in a cute, shy way. Like petite girls in television shows who act stupid around their crush, but it’s  Kyungsoo the Debbie Downer with a bachelors in theoretical physics and sweating bullets. 

 

Minseok sits him down on one of the three sofas and asks him about his day, leaning over a

and being generally interested. He looks like a tv show host with his novelty mug of coffee and ever so slightly tilted head. He’s smiling encouragingly, and Kyungsoo melts a bit onto the sofa cushions, leaving liquidized skinny jeans and his armani watch to drip all over the wooden floor. 

“Not much happened to be honest,” he says, adding the last part as a justification for his boringness. “I had to cover for Sehun today since his dog was sick or something.”

“Ah, that sucks,” Minseok replies in that way that charismatic people do- making Kyungsoo think ‘it really  _ does  _ suck, doesn’t it?’.

When he goes to check on the cooking, Kyungsoo takes the chance to snoop around. The sitting room is not so much minimalistic as bareboned. The remnants of a person living here are barely evident, just a footprint on the dusty floor caused by a slipper, and some sort of receipt that’s lying at the base of the fireplace. The tv is huge, hooked up to some box that puts Kyungsoo and Baekhyun’s broadband deal to shame. He thinks that Minseok must be rich and that Xiumin mustn't live here. And then, he thinks  _ wow that smells delicious  _ as the scent of beef sizzling get’s stronger. Minseok must practice cooking a lot, what with the dinner parties.

 

They sit at the table, which is oblong and covered in the rings of red bull cans. Minseok pours them both glasses of water and says he saves the “heavy” stuff for later, which makes Kyungsoo even more nervous about how good Minseok looks- he always has a gleam, or a gloss finish that doesn’t look disgusting and greasy, but angelic. Right now, as he serves up the food onto plates, he’s never looked hotter. Probably because he’s in his own home, and that’s just how things are.

There’s beef on the plate, fried onions and mushrooms. Kyungsoo picks up the fork, which has a pearl embedded into the bottom, and stabs at one of the vegetables. 

“I hope you like it,” Minseok says before Kyungsoo can even take a bite. It’s precious, how he looks so enthusiastic, and he’s not even considered eating his own food at all. So wrapped up in what other people are doing, how other people are feeling. 

“Of course I will,” Kyungsoo replies and takes a bite. It tastes… weird. There’s some seasoning in it, he realises, that tastes a bit familiar. Maybe his mother’s cooking? He takes another bite. And another. 

And when he grabs the steak knife, Minseok seems even less interested in himself as he watches, not a single thing has moved from his plate but the steam as the food went cold. His eyes become grey, there’s a flicker of Xiumin in his appearance, and then he’s back to Minseok again as soon as Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. 

Kyungsoo puts the beef- no, meat- in his mouth and chews. A bit of him goes cold. Not a bit, his whole body, every single part of him feels ripped from the bone, muscles contracting weirdly. When Xiumin blinks at him curiously, it disappears.

“Oh,” Kyungsoo says, cutting another piece of meat for himself. “That’s funny. I eat humans too.”

 


End file.
